Readings
Laughey, D. (2007). Music Media in Young People's Everyday Lives. In Music, Sound and Multimedia: From the Live to the Virtual (pp. 172-187).
"How is music interlaced with our everyday lives in general? What has been the impact of the Internet in the way music is used by young people privately and publicly (and the way this intermingles)?"
In this reading Dan Laughey explores how music is being consumed in both the public and private spheres of young people's lives and how these spheres are combining. It shows that highly portable multimedia devices such as iPods and MP3 players now make it possible to create a private listening sphere within a public one as well as existing mass media including radio and television bringing the public sphere into the private one. It also analyzes what music people listen to and how deeply they interact with it in various settings including social, reflective and active.
First there were record players, then radio, cassette players, music videos, CD players, Walkmans, boom-boxes, surround sound systems, MP3 players and finally iPods. Music has become so portable that it can fit in a pocket and be played anywhere. We can change how out environment is perceived emotionally by playing music that suites the mood we are in, or want to be in. In the car, at the gym, at work, in the bedroom, on a train; when we study, when we play, when we dance, when we chat or when we eat. Music is being used to distract from the everyday routines that seem mundane and boring.
I listen to music all day and change the genre in correspondence to the activity I'm doing. In the mornings I casually listen to radio in background as I work on a dairy farm. When I exercise I play the music that inspires me and invokes passions, I play it loud and listen intensely, the effort I put into my exercise fluctuates with the highs and lows of the song. Music also affects my creativity so when I'm designing the music I select that matches the theme that I'm trying to convey in my work.
The Internet has changed how artists are discovered, how individuals follow their tastes and how music is consumed both in public and in private. It is fair to say that the Internet has taken power from few and given it to many. The popular artists played on the radio, at social gatherings and elsewhere have new routes of distributing their music making it easier for them to be found. The Internet helps build niche communities based around a specific artist or genre and it felicitates the tools for individuals to locate more of their favourite music or discover unknown or rare music using P2P, online communities, social networks and Web 2.0 services such as Last.fm or Pandora that recommend new music based on the member's usage statistics and those of others.
As mentioned in the reading the use of the Internet for music downloads only boomed with the introduction of MP3 players and iPods. It seems plausible to say that the Internet provides the easiest way to purchase and download music, but use only blossomed after the wide uptake of portable media devices, most notably of which is the Apple iPod, as these devices allowed the downloaded songs to played almost anywhere. MP3 compatible devices can now be found everywhere: car radios, DVD players, stereo systems, mobile phones and even my surround sound system has a plug for an iPod or USB storage stick.
"Would the Internet necessarily work against broadcast media (i.e. radio and television)?"
This article briefly analyses the ending of the television music show Top of the Pops (TOTP) and how the Internet may of been the largest factor in its demise. It discusses the rise of the second media age in everyday life, but focuses greatly on the challenges of researching decentralised media models like social networks MySpace and Bebo.
It appears the TOTP style of one-way music consumption has become outdated in today's society. Its focus on populist music fails to address the unique tastes of individuals and niche communities, whilst the social dynamics of the web has provided a means to follow a diverse range of music. Instead of being exposed to music that is popular overall, we can now base our music consumption on what is popular with our friends, our friend's friends, and within online communities that focus on a specific type or genre of music.
Even though the Internet has created an interactive, distributed means of music consumption, I do not see centralised media outlets such as radio and television being replaced, at least not entirely. I feel that people are still interested in music that is played on radio and music shows as it is generally of high quality, however I think it is vital that these media outlets adapt to the changes the Internet has brought by implementing some form of interaction. In fact many centralised forms of music consumption has allowed for user opinion based content. For example, the singing talent contest Australian Idol uses SMS votes as a means of measuring who is the public's least favourite singer which decides who is eliminated from the competition; and many music count downs use Internet downloads as a way to gauge public opinion on what is popular.
Overall, I see the Internet becoming the primary source of music purchases, instead of physical media such as CDs, cassette tapes and vinyl records, but not completely eliminating the usage of radio and music television. It is instead supplementing these conventional media sources by giving the power of choice to many instead of few. The Internet's viral nature means artists do not need to be noticed by a very select few to be noticed by globally, or within a group that share the same tastes.
